Archive for August, 2009

INE wants to thank another incredible member of our IEOC! John Spaulding (littelgreymen12). John is currently enjoying a $50 Gift Certificate to Amazon.com. When you read John’s story below, I am sure you can determine what those funds will purchase.

John Spaulding, CCIE #25143, used the INE CCIE 2.0 program throughout his studies. He built his own rack for practice and used the Poly labs and Graded Mock labs. These really helped John figure out the grading process and where he could do better. John is currently sitting on the couch and catching up on all the Video games that he has missed in the passed 7 months. He is also spending time with family, his beautiful girlfriend, Courtney, and of course his pets who have missed him the most

Starting January, 2010, John plans to start studying for his service provider track and has upgraded his rack to accommodate the changes of the new blueprint. John plans on purchasing the INE service provider product and will attend a live Bootcamp in the near future. John wants to thank INE for all of their support. We want to thank John for his incredible work in our forums and for being one of our most cherished customers!

I know it took some time, but here we go: new full-scale Routing and Switching and Security labs are now being delivered to your members account. Two new labs have been posted under both IEWB-RS VOL2 v5.0 (updated Labs 1 and 2) and IEWB-SC VOL2 v5.0 (updated Labs 6 and 7) member areas.

The new Routing and Switching labs now fully reflect the upcoming changes in CCIE R&S lab exam. Specifically, every lab will now feature MPLS VPN section and new technologies added in IOS 12.4T such as Zone-Based Firewall, Control-Plane Protection and many others. Not only this, the whole full-scale lab paradigm have been shifted. You are no longer required to do a lot of basic configurations, such as creating VLAN, initializing IGPs, setting up BGP peerings and so on. Instead, you will find many settings such as switchport to VLAN assignment and basic IGP configuration already done for you. The full-scale scenarios now require you enhancing or tuning the existing configurations and are even more challenging than they was before. As many people would agree, discovering and working with the existing configuration is much harder than creating your own from scratch!

The total lab point value for R&S labs has been reduced to 79 points with a passing score of 64. This reflects the current situation in the CCIE testing, where Core Knowledge Section has taken 21 points away from the 100-point exam. As you may know, with the addition of the Troubleshooting section the total amount of point could become even less, probably as low as 54 points! However, we still decided to keep the point values of our full-scale labs higher, to provide you with more challenging scenarios than you could expect in the real exam.

Next, we plan releasing more full-scale labs for R&S track gradually every week. The full update of IEWB-RS VOL2 labs should to be completed by the 3rd week of September, as well as delivery of the new VOL1 sections, covering MPLS VPNs and 12.4T features. Oh, and did I mention that another two labs for IEWB-RS VOL4 (Advanced Troubleshooting) are on their way to being posted?

And lastly, some really good news for our CCIE Security students. In addition to the two labs that have been posted already, we plan releasing the remaining three labs next week and complete the update of our IEWB-SC VOL2 workbook. After this, you will see more updates coming to the IEWB-SC VOL1 technology focused scenarios.

If you loved the simplicity of the IPv6 manual tunnel we created in Part 1, you should love the Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) approach to tunneling IPv6 traffic through an IPv4 cloud just as much.

This simple approach takes the IPv6 packet and encapsulates it using the standard IPv4 GRE tunnel. But wait a minute? In Part 1 of this blog series, we had IPv4 encapsulate the IPv6 packet directly for tunneling across the v4 cloud. Why do we even need this additional method that adds GRE encapsulation to the process? Well, the answer is that this method is required within integrated IS-IS and IPv6 tunnel environments. If you plan on sending both IS-IS traffic and IPv6 traffic over the tunnel, you need the protocol field of the GRE header that allows identification of the passenger protocol.

INE has posted our initial class schedules for Q1 Y2010. The new schedule covers Routing and Switching, Security, Service Provider, and Voice classes, delivered both onsite and online. The bootcamp locations include Reno, Chicago, London, Miami and Raleigh-Durham (RTP) and Amsterdam. There certainly is the possibility that more locations, such as Dubai, will be added to this list soon. Email us at sales@INE.com if you have any additional locations to suggest!

In addition to the new schedule, you may want to check our current 2009 bootcamps, just in case you need a class soon. Note that starting October 2009, all R&S bootcamps (Kickstart, 5-Day, 12-Day, and the Mock Lab Workshop) follow the new CCIE R&S Version 4.X blueprint format. This means these classes cover IOS 12.4T features, MPLS VPNs, and the dedicated Troubleshooting section. These topics are in addition to the Core Knowledge section, which is already addressed in our bootcamps and with the popular Core Knowledge Simulation! Speaking of the Core Knowledge section be sure to look for some exciting blog posts about that soon.

Best of all, for a limited time (about one month following this announcement) all classes can be booked for a discount of 25%! In addition to this, you may purchase an R&S class (5-Day or 12-Day) bundled with the Advanced Technologies CoD or the CCNP CoD for the price of just the bootcamp! The ATC CoD serves as a perfect knowledge refresher for those going to the 5-Day bootcamp for the first time. And bundling the bootcamp with the CCNP CoD is an excellent choice for those looking to jump straight from CCNP to CCIE, or for those that need a CCNP refresh for the Core Knowledge section. Time to stop.. or you want more? Then you might consider another training package, which adds the CCIE R&S Audio Bootcamp and the set of our twenty, full-scale VOL2 labs at no additional cost to a 5-Day or 12-Day CCIE R&S bootcamps! This combination is perfect for those who feel solid with the fundamental stuff and need an extensive, non-stop practicing before taking the lab. It’s up to you to make your selection – good old discount, or any of the three value-added packages! You can find all about the special R&S offers by following this link.

As for CCIE Service Provider or Security classes, you may purchase an on-site class bundled with the respective Advanced Technology CoD for the price of the on-site class alone. This is an excellent choice for those seeking to cement their foundational understanding before attending the actual bootcamp. Check out the special offerings for SP here or follow this link for SC specials. And finally, if you’re looking to enroll into a CCIE Voice class saving 25% off the price, you may want to go and purchase a seat following this link!

As always, thank you for choosing INE, and we hope to see you in a virtual or physical classroom very soon!

I want to thank Rodney for this blog post idea. Rodney, like several others, did struggle a bit with some of the longer, scenario-based questions in the CCIE Written Exam. In fact, while these questions might not be too difficult, one tends to discover that time becomes a major factor in the written exam as a result of these question types.

In this blog post series, we will dissect some sample exam questions, and cover in detail how we might solve the query as quickly and efficiently as possible. Here is the first sample question:

Question 1 of 105

Examine the topology and partial router outputs shown in the Exhibits. How will the prefix of Loopback 0 on R1 appear on R6?

a) The prefix will be part of the External EIGRP learned route information

b) The prefix will be part of the Internal EIGRP learned route information

INE is currently producing its CCNA Audio Bootcamp. This audio bootcamp is being made available free via iTunes as it is produced. We hope you enjoy it! This product is not only recommended for CCNA students, but also CCIE R/S candidates as they prepare for the Core Knowledge Section of their lab exam.

To access these lessons, simply access the iTunes store and Search for INE. Module 1 Lesson 1 is published already for you to enjoy. If you do not/cannot use the iTunes store, you can access the files directly from podcast.ine.com.

Dmitriy built his own CCIE rack to the INE topology that he used for all hands-on practice . At this time, he is in the process of upgrading the rack for his next step – CCIE Service Provider.He is anxiously awaiting his new hardware, and has ordered the INE Service Provider Bundle.

In the mean time, Dmitriy is trying to make up for some lost time with family. His son Ryan celebrates his very first birthday on Aug 20, 2009, and his wife Susan missed him dearly for the past 10 months.